China's President Hu Jintao (L) speaks while other new Politburo Standing Committee Members (from 2nd L to R) Zhou Yongkang, Li Keqiang, Li Changchun, Wen Jiabao, Wu Bangguo, Jia Qinglin, Xi Jinping and He Guoqiang line up at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing October 22, 2007. (UPI Photo/Stephen Shaver)

Xi Jinping (simplified Chinese: 习近平; traditional Chinese: 習近平; pinyin: Xí Jìnpíng; IPA: ; born 1 June 1953) is a high ranking politician of the People's Republic of China. He currently serves as the top-ranking member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of China, the country's Vice President, Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Principal of the Central Party School and the 6th ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's de facto top power organ.

Son of Communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping served mostly in Fujian province in his early career, and was later appointed party chief of the neighboring Zhejiang province, and then was appointed as Shanghai's party chief following the dismissal of Chen Liangyu. Known for his tough stance on corruption and a frank openness about political and market economy reforms, Xi's combination of positions makes him the presumptive heir to current General Secretary and President Hu Jintao and the emerging leader of the Communist Party of China's fifth generation of leadership.

Xi Jinping was born in June 1953 in Beijing and is, by Chinese convention, a native of Fuping County, Shaanxi, his ancestral home. He is the youngest son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the founders of the Communist guerrilla movement in Shaanxi Province in northern China and former Vice-Premier. At the time his father served as the head of the Communist Party's propaganda department, and later Vice-Chairman of the National People's Congress. When Xi was 10, during the Cultural Revolution, his father was purged and was sent to work in a factory in Luoyang, and jailed in 1968. Without the protection of his father, Xi went to work in Yanchuan County, Yan'an, Shaanxi, in 1969 in Mao Zedong's Down to the Countryside Movement. He later became the Party branch Secretary of the production team. When he left in 1975, he was only 22 years old. When asked about this experience later by state television, Xi recalled it saying, "...it was emotional. It was a mood. And when the ideals of the Cultural Revolution could not be realised, it proved an illusion...".

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